The Athletic.

Welcome to the Business of Sport Podcast on The Athletic.

Now, since recording this episode,

something rather big has happened that is right up our street.

It's finally happened, the takeover of Newcastle United by the Saudi Arabia Finance Consortium.

And with the athletics George Colkin for some quick reaction.

George, how'd you feel?

Nuckered to be honest, Matt. I mean it's been a very, very busy 24 hours, incredibly hectic, sort of come from the blue, the irony really of it is after sort of all this time, but you know, we're talking about 18 months of this grinding away in the background, as you know perfectly well, writing about it, and really longer than that, I mean, it's, we've just gone past the four year anniversary of

Amanda Staverly going to her first match at St Jamese Park and deciding that

Newcastle with a club for her and you know those bids fell through as we know

and and now she's come back I mean I think it's the day that the Newcastle fans thought

wouldn't ever happen but Mike Ashley has gone after 14 controversial

difficult painful corrosive toxic years and they're now facing something much, you know, very, very different and

controversial for different reasons. Well, yes, we're going to get in for a little bit of

that and I and I'm not going to leave it all for you to do, George.

Thank you.

That would be unfair.

Look, come on.

Let's talk a little bit about that fan reaction and what this means for people in Newcastle, but dare I say the wider area, I think

they're probably parts of Newcastle that couldn't give a monkeys, but you know,

it's clearly is a regional story.

Yeah, I mean, I do think that the first important thing to say is that it is the end of something and you know if you're a 20 year old Newcastle fan for example pretty much the only thing you've ever known is Mike Ashley's ownership of the club. And we're talking about two allegations. We're talking about this sort of institutionalized failure, this lack of hope and ambition. Of course, all the controversial decisions that have kind of happened along the way, the rename of the stadium, the treatment meets out to people like Alan Shearer and Kevin Keegan, all those kind of next to prestige and the club's kind of well-being and leaving it really in the words of Alan Shearer, our columnist, an empty and hollow shell.

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